Mary

Mary wanted to be a superwoman. Well, we were just children when we knew each other so I guess she wanted to be a supergirl. My friend Mary was a beautiful tomboy…with long dark hair and dark sparkling eyes (their light as often guarded and pensive as it was bright and smiling) and smooth tan skin that paid proud testimony to her Mexican heritage…just one of the guys who didn’t seem to realize that she was well into the process of blossoming into a breathtaking woman.

I, of course, had an unspoken crush on her. Nothing, I convinced myself, would come of it…I was a year younger than her, not to mention shy and chubby, and she…she was a coltish goddess…but I luxuriated in the intoxication of “loving” her with the silent passion of the young would-be poet that I was.

My family…my mother, my brother, and I…and Mary’s family…her mother, her stepfather (though, to be honest, I’m not sure they were actually married), her older sisters, and her little brother…lived in a duplex in South-Central Los Angeles (back then a great neighborhood, we were within walking distance of USC, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, some amazing museums, and a big library.) My family was upstairs, hers was downstairs.

Mary often hung out with us guys…joining us on our “adventures” and actively sharing in our boyish dares. I still vividly remember that day that she took the dare to leap off the roof of the duplex down to the lawn; the roof slanted down and the distance wasn’t that far but it still seemed like a bad idea to me. I shared my misgivings with Mary but she just gave me a jaunty wink and told me not to fret so much.

I remember Mary up on the edge of the roof, hesitating while looking down while the other guys egged her on. And then she jumped and for a painfully long moment time stopped as I watched her plummet to the lawn with gangly grace. Mary hit the ground with a dull thump and then she was still. The guys went still and quiet. I raced to her side as her sister came out of the house to see what was going on. She wasn’t really hurt… she just had the wind knocked out of her. I helped Mary to her feet while her sister screamed at her for doing something so stupid and screamed at us for encouraging her to do it.

Mary, for her part, winked at me and whispered…”told you I could do it”. I just nodded, loving her all the more while, at the same time, wanting to protect her from her impulse to take dares in an effort to be one of the “guys”. Mary’s sister sent her into the house and sent us guys away.

Mary’s family moved out of the duplex and my family moved across town into our own house (a house my mother still lives in all these years later.) Eventually the two families lost touch.

I know, without a doubt, that Mary turned into a beautiful woman. I hope, with all my heart, that Mary found someone who appreciated her…that she had the beautiful babies that, in her rare reflective moments, she admitted to wanting to have and raise and love with all of her expansive heart.

I’m not sure why Mary has come to mind of late…it’s been a long while since I thought of her so vividly…but I hope that she is indeed happy and well and fulfilled wherever life has taken her.